A group of pensioners arrived campaigning to save their weekly tea dances and bingo club in Wapping which they fear is being priced out of their neighbourhood centre.

All the demonstrators mingled in a joint picket-cum-disco waving their different banners as Jamboree’s ragtime band set the pace for an ad hoc mass music protest as delegation after delegation went inside to address councillors with their various causes.

Meanwhile, there were cheers in the public gallery when the Jamboree delegation asked the council to declare the nightclub a “community asset” which would secure its place in any future redevelopment of the Cable Street Studios.